Petition and press release: SEPTEMBER 14 COALITION TO END MASS INCARCERATION AND CLOSE ATTICA

Following on what organizers describe as a hugely
successful community gathering of over 2000 people at Riverside Church, a
coalition of sponsoring groups is calling for a meeting with Gov. Andrew Cuomo
at his New York office on September 26 to discuss shutting down the notorious
Attica Correctional Facility.

The coalition also plans to deliver thousands of
petitions at noon that day asking Cuomo to “take a principled stance
against one of our country’s most enduring symbols of brutality and
racism”, and mass incarceration, by closing the prison.

The petition goes on to say that “closing
Attica would not resolve larger systemic problems, but would be a first step on
the part of New York State to address the widespread violations of basic human
rights that exist throughout the prison system”.

Attica was the scene of a four-day protest by its
men prisoners in 1971 demanding that their basic human and civil rights be
respected. The protest ended in a massacre by the New York State Police which
left 39 people dead, including ten guards, after the then-governor, Nelson
Rockefeller, refused to negotiate with the residents.

Last year the Correctional Association of New York
(CANY) issued a report which described conditions at Attica as the same as in
1971. Among other items, the report noted that the incidence of violence among
the men and staff at Attica was far higher than at other New York prisons. The
Association recommended that the facility be shut down.

The petition mentions that while Cuomo has closed
some prisons, he has not shuttered any maximum security facilities, where most
of the brutality and violence occur. It ends by saying that “if we are
committed to humanity, respecting the lives of those lost in 1971, and the many
brutalized today, we must close Attica”.

One of the organizers of the petition delivery
notes that September 26 is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. He goes on to say,
“It’s only fitting that we are doing this on that day because the
State of New York has never atoned for its actions in 1971 or its failure since
then to address the root causes of that uprising. Together with the event at
Riverside, this could be the beginning of a real movement to close Attica and
end mass incarceration in the State of New York”.